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Blackbird
David Stone
PO Box 16235
Baltimore
MD 21210
USA
#5
$10
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This page last updated: 26th July 2005. 		Blackbird #5

Blackbird is a spiral-bound A4-sized book. It is full of poetry and art. The poetry ranges from the traditional to the experimental. The art includes photo-collage and cut-and-paste combining words and pictures. Despite its title it will probably appeal more to lovers of the avant-garde than ornithologists.

Reed Altemus writes

	Found aiming previous chairs block talked
	zipper flecked Budapest motor exude searing
	flappy with vulgar boosting increadulous blastulas
	popover taped inside pantleg with crane-like movement
which gives a flavour of some the work found herein.

B.Z. Niditch contributes several poems. The theme of Jews from Eastern Europe is the one recurring non-blackbird theme. Bob Kim provides us with memoirs of a 6-year old immigrant's first day in Baltimore c.1849:

	On our first day in the land
		across the sea,

	Our watches spoke in unison:
Mike Golden contributes a long monologue EINSTEIN IN LA LA LAND based on an illicit romance between Einstein and Heisenberg's wife.

In her poem FOOTSTEPS Laura Ryder from Guyana under a photograph of a recumbent nude writes:

	A 1000 years the water
	has caressed the rocks,
	almost as long as men
	have embraced my body.
Andrew Topel's concrete poems are a delight but impossible to illustrate off paper.

Stanley Pelter produces contrasting haiku:

	telephone lines sway
	jerky blackbirds
	balance

		a moth
		in the blackbirds beak
		eyes shut
and in a single line
	night blackbird      i think it is seen       but maybe not
David Chirot portrays a blackbird in white snow as The Angel of Death, while Guido Vermeulen writes
	Death is only a grain
	Eat it blackbird
	Save my day!
	Open the journey of sleepless taboos

	My prayer was answered
	Blackbird returned as a dove.
There is much else to savour in the pages of this unusual collection. Discover it for yourself.

reviewer: Mandy Smith.
Blackbird #6

An A4 spiral bound book filled with images and print — poems and visuals.

The book contains a variety of styles of print. There are also a variety of black and white visuals, from hand drawn to graphics. The images by Thompson (no other names given) are particularly good examples of those produced from collages. Diane Bertrand has produced some lovely images containing a seal. Other contributing artists have also produced interesting work. In this issue, some artists have more than one page of work and a couple of the poems are given in a second language. The poems edge towards the linguistical. Some are incomprehensible and some look as though they should be performed rather than read. I give below an extract from AFTER SILENCE, by Eric Basso, so you can see for yourself the tone:

	years in the gray
	no speck of dark
	to pin a word to

	I staggered out of
	that death-in-life
	still waiting to exist

reviewer: Doreen King.